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Operation Bavaria Rescue has begun!!!

I came across a '72 3.0 Bavaria sitting in the back lot of a body shop last week. After some discussion with the body shop owner, I was able to get the phone number of the Bavaria owner. She told me that the car had been stored for years until she lost the facility to park this aging beast about 4 years ago... it has not been run since. Turns out it has 133,000 miles on it and no rot. Paint is chalky from sitting, but cleans up nicely. She is the 4th owner. I asked her for permission to get see if I could get it started, she said yes, and I said "cool!".

My neighbor and I have had several discussions on Saturday nights, over too many beers, about getting a project car that we can fix up and then sell to someone who might be interested in restoring it or driving it. Must be a semi diamond in the rust, whoops!, rough.... somewhat rare, parts available, and in good enough shape to skip the body work and paint expense, concentrate on the mechanicals and leave the rest to whoever buys it. We don't necessarily think we would make money on this thing, or even break even, so save those obvious comments for when I say we really made a big mistake going down this road.

We trucked on down there yesterday morning, a little tired and hung over from the heavy planning the night before. I brought a marine battery I had laying around, oil, coolant, ether, portable air pump, some misc. tools, some aspirin and a diet Coke. First we pumped up one of the rear tires. I have never seen a tire that did this... it started to lift the car off the ground, then we watched in horror as the side wall grew out to three times its normal size and with a resounding Pffff! settled down on the pavement where it was more capable of equilibrium.

Next we sample the gas, still smelled good, hardly any in there, so why not add some more and hope that any bad gas is diluted enough to get us through this? We installed the battery, and cranked a bit spraying ether into the Zenith Carbs. First attempt, the damn think kicked in response to the ether, so there was one positive sign. Kept trying, but it was not getting any fuel, went into tracing the fuel line up from the front wheel well and got my hand on it, disconnected it from the in line fuel filter, and it crumpled in my hands. OK, we can deal with this, so my neighbor sets off to get a fuel line at the local parts store. I figure I'll check the oil again and top it off, so I reach down to pull the dipstick and hit the coolant expansion tank hose with my knuckle. That was enough to snap it into two pieces and spew coolant. My neighbor came back from the parts store and luckily had the forethought to procure extra length, which got us through both failures, temporarily..same size hoses!

Any way, after about three hours of work and laughs, we finally got it started. This engine runs very strongly, no blue smoke, no smoke at all! Strong and confident! A bit cold blooded, but after a 1/2 hour of running, it was running pretty damned good.... that's when we noticed that the clutch does not engage. I hope its the slave cyclinder, but the pedal does not go soft on this car, like an e28, so we'll leave that for next week. I did find out that the master cylinder for the clutch is no longer available, so you have to adapt a mid 80's 7 series master, supposedly.

I told the owner that we would give her $200 for the car and she accepted. Now we have to decide if we want to show up when she signs over the title to us, he he. More to come. Coming next week... how many oddball wheels can we scavange up and swap onto it to get it to roll? Will we be able to get a trailer to pull it? Tune in next week, same Bav time, same Bav channel.

If you have any tips or suggestions, please e-mail me at [email protected] I have visited the senior six site and gotten a lot of info from it, but no response to my email, so if someone out there is a member of the senior six org, please contact me. Thanks!!